Interdiction For The Protection of Children
Podcast for June 2011
Beat Intro
Voiceover
00.08 This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest
community policing topics facing our nation.
Interview
Jeremy Writt
00.15 Hello. I’m Jeremy Writt, on behalf of the Cops Office. I’m here today with
Sergeant Derek Prestridge of the Texas Department of Public Safety to talk to you
about Interdiction for the Protection of Children.
Sgt. Prestridge, what are the key components of your course and what can
students expect to learn?
Sgt. Prestridge
00.32 Well, the course, interdiction of course means to intervene – and the class is
designed to intervene on behalf of children, in order to protect children. The
primary focus of the class itself is directed towards educating the first-line
officer – the patrol officer – because we’re aware that it’s the patrol officer that
has more contacts with the public and is at a greater potential of coming into
contact with child victims or the subjects that pose a threat to those children.
In regards to the components of the course, we look at a few things. One of the
things we look at are we want to make the student aware of the complexity of
the different behavioral patterns that exist amongst offenders and also make the
student just aware of the varying types of offenders that are out there – from the
offenders that will try to commercially exploit a child victim to the offenders that
will actually engage in assaulting the child. We also might try and make the
student aware of the dynamics and the complexities of the dynamics of the child
victim itself and make the student aware of the varying types of victims and
some of the things that they are exposed to as victims.
Jeremy
01.52 You spoke about some of the dynamics of the child victims. One thing that I
thought was interesting is how often it is these kids are unable to disclose abuse
when the opportunity presents itself. Why is that?
Sgt. Prestridge
02.03 Well, from what we can gather and the way that we convey it to the student –
because this can be very confusing to the public and oftentimes, it’s what makes
it very difficult to get these trials prosecuted, these cases prosecuted and even
law enforcement officers themselves, without the proper education, just don’t
have an understanding of it. And what we teach the student – it can actually be
numerous variables that can play a role in the dynamics of the victim themselves
and the child that will prevent them from crying out or disclosing. It can be
something – it can be just one or multiple things – for example the duration of the
victimization itself can play a role in it, the authority position that the suspect or
the offender has on or over the child victim. It can also be the support system
that is or is not in place for the child. Of course, if there is a really good support
system in place, then that can be very beneficial to the child. Of course, if it’s
absent, that can also play against the child coming out and disclosing. Another
thing is the age of the child. And again, it can just be one of these variables or it
can be multiple variables that can play a role into whether or not the child decides
to disclose or outcries – or how much of the victimization that the child may
disclose to someone.
Jeremy
03.25 So it sounds like you’re not just educating the law enforcement professional or
you’re educating them also on how they need to educate and interact with their
community. Are there any particular ways these first-line officers can use his or
her community partnerships to create solutions to some of these problems? Like
kidnapping or human trafficking?
Sgt. Prestridge
03.44 Yes, absolutely. And the approach of this particular training is that we have
stressed a multi-disciplinary approach. Because of the dynamics and the
complexity dealing with child victims and also the potential for the offenders
themselves, there’s just too much to look into and to try and remain alert for, for
just one specific agency or one particular officer. So we strongly encourage that
the officers and the agencies make use of a lot of the resources that are available
– that they get out and they communicate and they liaison. Prime example with
the Child Protective services – we strongly encourage that. The class itself, we
actually bring in our own VPS crime victim counselors to come in and to make
the students aware of what resources are out there.
By no means are we encouraging these officers to conduct forensic interviews.
We’re just simply encouraging the officer to conduct an initial contact, just to
ensure that there’s an awareness that the child is even present. There are experts
out there that can provide assistance to the child and we encourage these
agencies and these officers to make use of those resources. On a federal level
and on a state level, we strongly encourage that agencies and officers make use
of any local child advocacy centers and that they liaison, they invite them to the
meetings and they actually develop a rapport and a really good working
relationship with these other resources to work in an effort to save and help these
children.
Jeremy
05.18 Not all of these kids are kidnapped like the public perception would be. How does
this course help officers learn how to identify and intervene in situations that don’t
involve kidnappings – say, like a runaway situation?
Sgt. Prestridge
05.31 Well, and that’s a really good point. In the class itself, we really emphasize the
awareness of runaway/throwaway child. They do make up an account for the
largest number of missing children in the nation. Although there are a lot of
abductions and different varying types of abductions, we really strongly
encourage that the officers take time and quite possibly refocus their attention or
at least their belief of what the runaway consists of. And through that, we
believe that they’ll actually identify perhaps maybe the reasons why the child is
running away, which could potentially lead to an investigation because the child
could be running away from a harmful environment, which we have learned is
very possible. And then also, on the other side of that, the child, because of their
status of running away and their attempt to survive and the way that they’ve
been exploited – that they could be exploited commercially – and then that
would lead to other criminal investigations.
Oftentimes with the runaways, sometimes they run away because they have been
approached either online or through other means and they don’t realize that
they’re a victim at the time, which just creates another challenge whenever you’re
speaking to these children – they don’t view themselves as a victim. And
oftentimes, the officer may be met with resistance. And so we try to educate the
officers that these are the different types of components and the different
challenges that they may be met with in addition to the family abductions, of
course, and the other types of abductions that do exist out there.
Jeremy
07.04 That seems like a very difficult crime to mitigate. Have you heard any success
stories since you’ve been giving this course? Has anyone who’s taken the course
come back to you and said that they’ve been able to save some of these vulnerable
children or identify some of these offenders?
Sgt. Prestridge
07.19 Yes we actually, we began teaching the class internally and we’re still in the
process of trying to complete the education process for all of our commissioned
personnel. We began the training in 2009. In 2008 we could not, as a state
agency, we could not account for the recovery of one single missing child. And
considering the size of our state – and that’s with conducting approximately 3
million traffic stops just for 2008. We of course realized that this is a reporting
problem, but because it is a reporting issue, we realized first-hand that if it’s
worth reporting, then people are going to pay attention to it and it will draw an
awareness to it.
For 2010, to our delight, we can account for the recovery of 14 missing children
of varying degrees. Some were as a result of family abductions – we’ve had
several family abductions where we were able to recover the children. We’ve
had some instances, one in particular, where through the troopers investigation
techniques, actually was able to identify two juveniles that were with an adult
subject that were actually missing – however the parents didn’t even realize they
had actually been missing. And the trooper, in our belief, was able to intervene –
interdict, if you will – and prevent the assault of at least one of those children.
We’ve actually had instances where our troopers now are beginning to pay closer
attention to the runaways and as a result, we recovered one runaway who was
actually being commercially exploited. We were able to identify the offender
that was exploiting her – also known as a pimp – and in the process we were able
to remove her from the harmful event. And this also led to an investigation
across state lines and we’ve been able to identify several other cases where
children are being exploited through means of over the internet and we’ve also
identified several suspects. As I stated before, we teach and educate the officers
how to gather intelligence on suspects, because we realized very quickly in an
attempt to identify indicators that someone may be a threat to a child, there may
not always be a crime that is being committed. However, that is useful
information that the officer may obtain. And to the process, another instance of
our multidisciplinary approach – we will report this information to our
intelligence center, our fusion center. And just like after 9/11, we began
collecting information on people that – suspicious people taking photographs of
bridges and refineries – we’re doing the same thing with information now
regarding people that may show indications that they pose a high-risk threat to
children. And we’re able to analyze that information and based on the research
we’re able to assign investigators if it deems necessary.
So we’ve seen a tremendous amount of success, considering it has definitely
been well received by the officers. We did focus, as I said before, on the officers
because of their contact with the public and it’s really been well received by them
and they’ve definitely been applying these techniques we’ve provided them
which has contributed back to the program. We’ve been able to use actual events
to show the success of it and also to give an example to the student of how they
can apply the techniques.
Jeremy
10.49 That’s outstanding. How can other law enforcement professionals get more
information on your course and what steps do they take in order to maybe
implement some of these techniques in their jurisdictions?
Sgt. Prestridge
11.01 We are working on obtaining funding for the class so that we can begin
providing the class for free to other agencies because we want to push this
information out for free. And in the meantime, we will travel to assist other
agencies that provide the class. Our longterm goal is to provide the training at a
level where the agencies can conduct the training themselves, they can teach the
training themselves to other agencies within their own agency – to teach them
how to build rapport with their intelligence centers, with their local child
advocacy centers, with their child protective services and hopefully so that it can
pick up in other areas.
In order to obtain this particular type of training from us, we just ask that you
send us an email, give us a phone call. I’m located at the Texas Department of
Public Safety Office in Austin, TX and you can email me at
derek.prestridge@txdps.state.tx.us. I’m also located in the main website and we
can begin working on providing your agency assistance on what training is
available.
Jeremy
12.12 Well we certainly encourage listeners to get in contact with you because we would
like to see those success stories duplicated all around the country. On behalf of
the Cops office, I’m Jeremy Writt.
Beat Exit
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